posted at 5:01 pm on February 16, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Stuff really started hitting the fan in Venezuela this week, as public discontent with the ongoing crises of basic goods shortages, runaway inflation, and high crime rates has finally come to a head and protests have started popping up all over the country. Even with the “emergency decree powers” President Nicolas Maduro was granted and started wielding late last year, the economic situation in the oil-rich country has only continued to deteriorate, and the fact that armed motorcycle vigilantes showed up and started shooting to try and break up the protest in Caracas on Wednesday so far hasn’t deterred Venezuelans from keeping it up.

Which means things are going to start getting even more Orwellian in short order. Cue the beginning of a social-media crackdown:

Twitter Inc. said the Venezuelan government blocked users’ online images as opposition groups marched through Caracas for a third day, demonstrating against record shortages and the world’s fastest inflation.

Nu Wexler, a Twitter spokesman, confirmed yesterday in an e-mail that the government was behind the disruption. …

In the absence of information from the government or local television outlets, Venezuelans have turned to foreign reporters and social media for news. Twitter users had been posting their photos of demonstrations that started in provincial towns earlier this month, providing an alternative to state-controlled media. It’s unclear if photos were blocked for users of all Internet providers in Venezuela, Wexler said. …

“We are having a media blackout,” Josefina Blanco, a freelance science journalist and social media user, said in an e-mail from Caracas. Only because of Twitter, NTN24 and radio station RCR 750 “ can we know what is really going on in our streets,” she said.

Authorities accuse Leopoldo Lopez of murder and terrorism in connection with violence around four days of sporadic anti-government protests that have left three people dead and both sides blaming each other for the bloodshed.

The demonstrators have vowed to stay in the streets until Maduro resigns, although there is no sign of that happening.

And on Friday, Maduro introduced a “program of peace and tolerance,” during which he denounced the protestors as “fascists.” I’m not sure how just saying that you’re going to bring about peace and tolerance somehow means that peace and tolerance are going to happen (socialism, for the win?), and Venezuelans don’t sound ready to be convinced. Via Juan Nagel at the Daily Beast:

Venezuelans are accustomed to their government using Orwellian language. Indeed, this is a government that claims the scarcity and inflation caused by its own disastrous economic policies is somehow the consequence of an “economic war” engineered by the opposition. It is a government headed by a man who claims his predecessor died of cancer because his enemies—namely, the U.S.—“inoculated” him with the disease. The feeling that lunatics have taken over the insane asylum is what is driving much of the protests. …

The young are restless, and they have had it. They want solutions to their problems, and an end to the mayhem that chavista Venezuela has become. Their strategy is not clear, and so far they are outnumbered and outgunned.

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There are some tweets that illustrate the fascist nature of the Venezuelan regime.

The first one is from the minister of jails, the ineffable Iris Valera, one of the most violent members of the regime, who made friends with the jail leaders, those inmates that are the ones running the show in jails, directing from the comfort of their cells of sorts of extortion rings and mafia like business. True to character she admits of the role of the chavismo storm-troopers on bike and glorifies them.

The[opposition protester, pejorative] are scared shitless from the organized “colectivos” [paramilitary chavista organizations, those caught shooting from their motor bikes]! The colectivos are fundamental pilar for the defense of the fatherland!

No further comments needed on that one.

The next one is from a democrat, not a fascist, but he tells of what they did to his daughter. He has been accused of conspiring with Carratu Molina, a man he claims he does not know. From a recorded phone call he denies ever taking place. He is into hiding while he puts together something with his lawyers. It did not matter, they ransacked his apartment, they took his daughter for questioning and they are not letting his wife in. The real reason, besides looking for a pretext to justify current repression? Gerbasi was a frequent international expert on Globovision while Maduro was the incompetent foreign minister.

The third one reflects what fascism does to media, any media. The target here is Venevision who has collaborated with the regime closely since Jimmy Carter sponsored an encounter between its owner, Gustavo Cisneros, and Chavez. The opposition point of view is not absent but rare and censored as needed. VVsincensura is apparently a tweeter account held by former or hidden Venevision journalists.

Venezuelan security forces raided the homes of the opposition leader Leopoldo López and his parents, looking to arrest the man blamed by President Nicolás Maduro for three deaths at recent anti-government protests.

López, who hasn’t been seen since a press conference on Wednesday, was not at either of the homes in Caracas’s leafy eastern district when groups of national guardsmen and military intelligence officials arrived late at night. Aides said neighbours banged on pots and pans to protest what they consider an arbitrary detention order.

“Maduro, you’re a coward,” López said in a message posted on Twitter

after security forces left the premises early Sunday.

“You’re not going to force me or my family to bow down.”

The midnight manhunt capped another night of protests during which security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets to break up a group of 500 students who have vowed to remain on the streets until all anti-government demonstrators are released. Authorities said 23 people were being treated for injuries, none of them life-threatening.

Earlier on Saturday, Maduro said authorities were searching for the 42-year-old López, who he accuses of leading a US-backed “fascist” plot to oust him from power just two months after his party’s candidates won mayoral elections by a landslide. López “ordered all these violent kids, who he trained, to destroy the prosecutor’s office and half of Caracas and then goes into hiding,” Maduro told thousands of supporters at a rally on Saturday. “Turn yourself in, coward.”
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have been watching events in Venezuela for quite a while. There is an uncanny resemblance between Maduro’s action and those of Obama’s. For example, both are demonizing others for the failings of their own policies. I fear that Venezuela is a ‘leading indicator’ of what we’ll be seeing here in the USA in a few years.

The young are restless, and they have had it. They want solutions to their problems, and an end to the mayhem that chavista Venezuela has become. Their strategy is not clear, and so far they are outnumbered and outgunned.

But they are not going anywhere.

imagine that. I wonder what would happen if their constitution had a 2nd amendment.

I’m extremely skeptical that what’s happening in Venezuela represents a majority reaction against the terrible policies of Maduro and the socialists/all-but-communists there. Instead, I think those of us who are hoping that Venezuelans would wake up to the failures of socialism are interpreting events through the filter of our own perceptions of the failures of Chavez and Maduro.

In other words, I think what the majority in Venezuela want is MORE socialism, in the same way that progs in the US think that the failures of their policies mean they need to double-down on them. Because…next time is different!

A foolish perspective on their part, I know, but you can’t persuade gangrene to get better. You have to surgically remove it or let the host die. One or the other.

Joe Kennedy praises Maduro in his free oil commercials. He is responsible for the death of his ex wife. Part of the War On Women waged by the Kennedy Klan. The Democrats control the media. Our country is lost. How could anyone ever get away with the lies Obama told about Benghazi?

I haven’t followed the situation very closely in Venezuela. What do the protestors want? Do they want whatever government they had before Chavez and his gang took over or do they just want a different dictator?

I haven’t followed the situation very closely in Venezuela. What do the protestors want? Do they want whatever government they had before Chavez and his gang took over or do they just want a different dictator?

Students protested in Iran in 2009 and now in Venezuela over corruption and power grabs; yet in the US we see nothing. This US administration is following the Cloward-Piven Strategy of overloading the system until it collapses and it is working very well.

This President has 29 times illegally and unconstitutionally changed ObamaCare’s rules without going through Congress. Like it or not that is the way our Constitution is written. The remedy is a constitutional amendment, not authoritarian rule. Even very liberal constitutional expert Jonathan Turley believes Obama is violating the rule of law and the Constitution and has said so publicly in TV interviews. He said he agrees with many of Obama’s ideals, but that he is illegally going about it. Yet the American people, in particular young people, seem willing to accept what is happening.

In Germany the people stood still as the government took away freedom. As Pastor Niemöller wrote: “In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

Few know that according to Senator Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, the president wanted in the 2013 and 2014 National Defense Appropriations Act a clause where the military could arrest, without charges and hold for an indefinite term, people who the government declared were potential domestic terrorists; something that an Executive Order could declare. And such an Executive Order would be legal, constitutional and enforceable, even if it isn’t, until challenged in court. The SCOTUS has no enforcement power and the Constitution relies on the rule of law controlling actions declared unconstitutional. The addition to the NDAA of 2013 was stayed by a federal court judge in PA. I have yet to hear the results of these legal actions and I have talked to my US Representative about this. The media is compliment with the direction of this administration and are keeping as much information away from the people as possible. They are useful idiots as Lenin said about the Left in the West which supported the USSR.

President Nixon was called a crook and he never implemented his thoughts about using the IRS against his perceived enemies. So what then is Obama who did use the IRS to go after his “enemies? And has done much, much more than Nixon even contemplated since we have Nixon’s tapes with his innermost thoughts. We know little about Obama and why is that?

Venezuela political protests, February 2014
14m
Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who is wanted by police, says he will march Tuesday in Caracas; says ready to face arrest – @Reuters
read more on trust.org
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CARACAS, Feb 16 (Reuters) – A Venezuelan opposition leader wanted by police in connection with deadly street protests said on Sunday he will march with his supporters in the capital Caracas on Tuesday, and that he is ready to face arrest if necessary.

“I will be there showing my face, I have nothing to fear,” the opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez, said in a brief video posted to his Twitter account. “If there is any illegal decision to jail me, then I will accept that decision and that infamous persecution by the state.”

The Devil’s Excrement
Observations focused on the problems of an underdeveloped country, Venezuela, with some serendipity about the world (orchids, techs, science, investments, politics) at large. A famous Venezuelan, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, referred to oil as the devil’s excrement. For countries, easy wealth appears indeed to be the sure path to failure. Venezuela might be a clear example of that.

Oh yeah, socialism works. They just haven’t spent enough money or created a big enough bureaucracy. This is what you get when you try to explain to them that socialism has never worked anywhere it has been tried.

That’s the funny thing about choosing communism, once you have it it’s really hard to get rid of it.

lel2007 on February 16, 2014 at 7:55 PM

That’s what I keep telling politicians about Obamacare. They think they can wait for it to collapse on its own. I hope that works for them but the longer you wait the more entrenched it becomes. The longer you let it go on the harder it is to get rid of it and the more it costs in money and lives.

Greetings HM1 (for the non-navy types on the thread, HM1 is the rank abbreviation for Hospital Corpsman First Class – the SS means he is a qualified submariner)

What boats were you on? When I was active duty, I was on USS Sea Devil (SSN-664). When they decommissioned her (sob) I cross decked to USS West Virginia (SSBN-664). Went reserve, and went to med school, and subsequently transferred to the Medical Corps (Internal Medicine, with a rating in diving and undersea medicine). 27 years active and reserve service.

What boats were you on? When I was active duty, I was on USS Sea Devil (SSN-664). When they decommissioned her (sob) I cross decked to USS West Virginia (SSBN-664). Went reserve, and went to med school, and subsequently transferred to the Medical Corps (Internal Medicine, with a rating in diving and undersea medicine). 27 years active and reserve service.

Sorry about being off topic – had to give a greeting to a shipmate.

SubmarineDoc on February 16, 2014 at 9:13 PM

USS SAN FRANCISCO (SSN 711). Retired in ’98. Ah, so you were a UMO. You were the dude I had to plead with to clear someone for sea in order to get the XO off my back. Fortunately the two UMOs I worked with understood the game. If I asked nice, they’d even call the boat for me to deliver the bad news in order to get me out of the middle.

True story: I had an XO who thought he was the second coming of Rickover… “Doc (me) I need So-and-so to go to sea. You go up to squadron and tell that doctor to clear him immediately and don’t come back without it.”

The XO never quite understood the limits of his power. Glad those days are over.

SubmarineDoc and 307wolverine, nice to see a few common sense SS vets aboard. I usually don’t look at handles around here. Aft ETR2 SS on the USS Von Steuben, SSBN 632. I was on board when she “sank” the Sea Lady off Rota, Spain. That kind of dates me a bit, I guess.

Great video. But I’m not sure I should feel sorry for them. They voted in this awful government and most of us knew then it wouldn’t end well. Of course, the kids aren’t respnsible.

crankyoldlady on February 16, 2014 at 6:42 PM

But they didn’t vote for this government, at least not in the past two elections. Too bad the OAS, UN, etc., couldn’t give a mierda about communists stealing elections, looting public treasuries and natural resources, and sending the proceeds to Cuba.

I suspect there is far more “We want solutions to our problems…better socialism! More freebies!” to the instability than anything else, just like I suspect the growing disapproval numbers for Obama represent a substantial number of people who don’t think his socialistic policies have gone far enough.

SubmarineDoc and 307wolverine, nice to see a few common sense SS vets aboard. I usually don’t look at handles around here. Aft ETR2 SS on the USS Von Steuben, SSBN 632. I was on board when she “sank” the Sea Lady off Rota, Spain. That kind of dates me a bit, I guess.

amr on February 17, 2014 at 12:15 PM

So you were a Reactor Operator? My God, I am getting old too. I can’t recall the name of the division that does that.